the making of, by greg allen
“You can feel the ghosts,” Nicolas Ghesquière said of the Frick, which the House of Louis Vuitton rented and closed down for several days for the livestreamed presentation of the 2027 Cruise Collection. “Not just the art, but the furniture, the objects, the lifestyle.”
But also the art. And the objects.
Continue reading “Haring Haunted House”
Poking around The Broad’s Keith Haring show, which is at the Walker for another week or so, led me to this photo of Haring at work. It was taken in late 1982 by Alan Tannenbaum. I feel like I’d seen images of this moment before, but this time, what caught my attention was Haring’s t-shirt.
Paint Fair, in carnival lettering with a circus tent and a frilly, scalloped, tent-like border.
I noticed it because it looked very similar to Nuts’N’Shit, a screenprinted metal work by Cady Noland and Diana Balton. The one at MoMA [above] is listed as a screenprinted edition of one, but the one in Frankfurt was enamel, framed, and from the Brants. I will trust the artist to sort that out.
Continue reading “Paint Fair, Nuts’N’Shirt”When we last saw Luna Luna, the 1987 art amusement park recently reopened in Los Angeles after spending the last 37 years in a bunch of shipping containers in fields in Vienna and Texas, one thing seemed clear: Drake did not spend $100 million to buy it from its previous owners, the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation.
But the $100 million price is sort of unfair, a cheat, a third-round shorthand that was meant to get repeated in the same breath as Luna Luna and Drake. When the NYT first half-reported on Live Nation’s project, introduced to them by the Mugrabis, of bringing Luna Luna to Drake, the figure was floated as the “overall investment” that was “approaching $100 million.” What if it was the Mugrabis who tracked down Luna Luna at the Birch Foundation’s ranchette, made a deal for it, and flipped it, Yves Bouvier-to-Ryobolovlev-style, for a nice profit?
The Birch Foundation’s 990 filings with the IRS show that they sold the Luna Luna assets in 2022 for $15 million, $1.8 million below the “market value” carried on their balance sheet. So they actually lost money on their collection of Basquiats, Harings, and their Hockney, Dali, and Lichtenstein pavilions, at least on paper. Not-for-profit indeed. But they did still get $15 million in cash, right? Where’d that go?
While trying to figure out the details of Luna Luna’s history between its hype launch in 1987 by André Heller, and it’s re-emergence with Live Nation & Drake, two sidebar stories kept jumping into view: the first is Heller’s near miss with forgery charges. Heller tried to turn a minor Basquiat drawing into a major “Basquiat Artwork” by collaging the artist’s little sketches for his Luna Luna monkey butt ferris wheel onto a crude Africanist frame. He sold the work, then scrambled to buy it back when the heat was on, and then tried to blow off the whole thing as a “prank.”
The second, is the giant WTF that is the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation, and how did they end up with an agreement in 1990 to buy Luna Luna from Heller in the first place? We could ask André Heller, but I think the answer to the first question is also the answer to the second: the Birch Foundation is a giant pile of money and vast tracts of land under the complete and unaccountable control of one or two people who use it for what they want.
Continue reading “Art Carny, Part 2: Birch, Please”
So Luna Luna is now a Drake joint, and it is open in Los Angeles. In the year-plus since news of the art amusement park’s re-emergence for the first time since its brief debut in Hamburg in 1987, the number being floated is $100 million. $100 million for a one-of-a-kind, first-ever, long-lost traveling carnival filled with rides and games designed by art stars like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenny Scharf, Salvador Dali…Sonia Delaunay…Jörg Immendorff…Georg Baselitz…did I mention Kenny Scharf? The list of 38 artists Viennese artist André Heller wrangled [actually 37, plus himself] was split neatly between famous artists and famous in Austria artists.
Heller worked from 1985-87 to make Luna Luna happen. It feels the initial $350,000 grant [sponsorship?] from Neue Revue, a German magazine, would have been eaten up by the $10,000 honorarium each artist was supposedly paid. And that’s before fabrication. It does sound like Heller had a rickety old traveling carnival at hand, so maybe all that was left was Viennese scenery painters blowing up artists’ sketches. [Heller claimed Delaunay “discussed her ideas” for a gateway to the park before she died in 1979, which “Heller’s artisans” realized. Or created from scratch. But let’s circle back to that.] It opened in a Hamburg park, had 250,000 visitors, according, I assume, to Heller, and was set to travel the world bring peace or whatever. It didn’t happen.
Continue reading “Art Carny, Part 1: Hundred. Million Dollars”
This blog will not become a Keith Haring fanboi blog. This blog will not become a Keith Haring fanboi blog. This blog will n–
It’s just that there happen to be interesting Haring-related materials flowing through the auctions at the moment. Like this blanket, which Haring apparently made four of for a Vivienne Westwood fashion show in 1982. It’s screenprinted on both sides, with a little border. At 95×146 cm, it’s more of a lap blanket? Maybe the show was cold? But still, not enough even for the front row, just the collaborators. According to Rago, where this is for sale next month, it was originally given to Ted Muehling, whose jewelry was used in the show.
[UPDATE] Vivienne Westwood expert Leslie Dick notes that this was not crowd swag, but an actual runway look. It was featured in the 1983 Witches Collection as a shawl, or perhaps a wrap. Here’s an image from the show, as archived by TheBlitzKids:
A silkscreen would imply the possibility of more than four, of course, and on media other than blanket. So if you miss this one, maybe there’ll be another chance.
3 Dec 2020, Lot 563: Keith Haring Blanket, 1982, est. $1,000–1,500 [ragoarts.com UPDATE: sold or $6,875, nice showing]
Previously, related: Warhol X Haring X Oswald Collab;
Untitled (Unfinished Textiles), 2019;
Also: how about the lap blanket Olafur Eliasson made for NetJets Europe back in 2005?
What was Andy Warhol painting red in 1984 that he cut the edge of off after stretching it, and then signed it?
Andy + I went to Sean Lennon’s birthday party in 1984 at Taverne on the Green. I think it was his ninth birthday. On the way there Andy gave me one of the “ties” he had brought to give to Sean. They were the discarded “trimmings” from the edges of his paintings. He called them “ties”, signed them, and gave several to Sean.
is a thing Keith Haring wrote on Febuary 7, 1989, four and a half years later, on the back of the Warhol “tie,” that his buddy Kermit Oswald had already framed and signed himself in 1988?
Oswald was a childhood friend of Haring, and they stayed tight. He’s been head of the Keith Haring Foundation for decades. He ran a framing and fabrication shop after moving to New York with/to see his buddy. He talks of basically curating/producing/installing Haring’s shows. And he also jointly signed a lot of Haring’s work. It’s interesting to see his contribution to, say, these early painted cutout figures from Haring’s first show at Tony Shafrazi being explicitly circumscribed to “providing the wood.” As if the guy who picked up the plywood always signing things as “Copyright me” is just how things work.
Isn’t it more logical that the guy with the woodshop cut the figure, the guy with the marker drew his design, and then the guy with the woodshop routed it out and painted it in–and then signed his name first?
Anyway, point is, the Haring market seems to tell itself an awful lot of stories to make itself feel good. But the Warhol signed garbage given to Keith in a cab and turned into A Work by Kermit which Keith documented and signed later market seems to be doing just fine. At the Haring Estate stoop sale last week, this thing got a title and sold for 40x its estimate. I’m sure Sean is rummaging through his closet as I type.
Was there ever really more time to ruminate on the unsung history of photomurals in post-war art, or was there just not enough attention being paid to the systemic violence people of color face at the hands of police and other instruments of state power?
Fortunately–you know, fortunately is really not the right word here-these two subjects have met at the Guggenheim Museum in a concentrated exhibition curated by Chaedria LaBouvier called “Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story.”
Defacement is the informal title [sic] of a work Jean-Michel Basquiat made on the wall of Keith Haring’s studio after fellow downtown artist Michael Stewart was hog-tied, beaten, left in a coma, and ultimately killed, by NYPD in September 1983.
Haring cut the drawing out and framed it. It was hanging above his bed when he died, and it now belongs to his god-daughter, Nina Clemente. LaBouvier’s prodigious show is the culmination of years of research and careful interviews with Stewart’s family and many artists in his milieu.
And it includes a to-scale photomural of Haring’s tagged up wall, with a roughed out hole where the drawing used to be.
“Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story” is on view through Nov. 6, 2019 [guggenheim.org]
Behind Basqiat’s ‘Defacement’: Reframing A Tragedy [nytimes]
In 1983 Keith Haring painted his [?] Land Rover. He was the first artist-in-residence for the Montreux Jazz Festival, for which he designed a well-known poster.
One of those Keith Haring Montreux posters, image: galartis.ch
The snaky figures from the poster, along with the words MONTREUX JAZZ, appear on the rear of the military-lookin’ 1971 Land Rover Series IIa 109.
the Haring Land Rover on display at a press event of some kind at Petersen’s Auto Museum, with the CH sticker, but minus the Swiss license plate.
The Swiss license plate above is visible in the photo of Haring mid-way through the painting process.
The curator at the Petersen does not appear able to process this seemingly basic information. The owner of the car, so far unidentified in the press, offered to show it at the museum through the end of the year. That Kenny Scharf showed up to talk about Haring’s car is, I hope, a coincidence.
[UPDATE A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER: I have my guess, based on Haring’s account of his later travels to Switzerland. And now I expect the Land Rover was never his to begin with, but a friend/collaborator’s.]
Anyway, this is now officially the second coolest art Land Rover in the world, after Donald Judd’s. [Thanks Steve for the heads up]
One of a Kind Keith Haring Land Rover Revealed [roverparts.com]
See the 1971 Land Rover painted by Keith Haring at the Petersen Automotive Museum now [scpr.org]
I love it when a tossed-off plan comes together. In this case, it’s the idea of artist-designed vinyl car wraps. And camo.
The Times had a great story about auto spyshots, and the increasing use of camouflage vinyl wraps on test cars. Some of the wraps seem designed to thwart a spy photographer’s focus, or at least to obscure the contours and details of the car.
The different patterns are discussed as resembling “a Keith Haring painting,” and “World War I ‘dazzle ships,'” or as sporting the swirly, painterly “Van Gogh Look.”
It should only be a matter of time before a collection of contemporary artist vinyl wraps hits the streets. Right?
Secret Cars Kept Under Wraps, in Public [nyt via slow and steady wins the race]
Previously:
The Jeff Koons wrapped BMW
Vinyl wrapped art car: Hirst]
First or worst? Peter Max decal car c. 1968
Razzle Dazzle and Dutch Google Maps camo
OG WWI dazzle design and the Koons revival